Tag Archives: decorating

Without a doubt, moving into our first house has been the greatest adventure of my life so far. Its also been a lot of work. Sure, we had the bonus of moving into a new build, so in terms of actual work needing to be done to the house, its been practically minimal, but we knew we instantly wanted to get stuck into turning our empty white-walled canvas of our house into the beautiful home that we’ve been dreaming of since we started looking for places.

Two months later, we have made our mark on pretty much every room in the house, but nothing yet has actually been completely finished. Its things like ‘we need pictures on the wall here’ or ‘we need to finish painting in here’; little things that annoyingly still make the rooms seem incomplete.

We do, however, have one (practically) finished room, and ironically, that’s actually our guest bedroom. I say ‘practically’ because we just haven’t got round to putting the curtains up yet, but we do have them! So here it is, our guest bedroom:

This is the room where we created our geometric feature wall, which you may have already seen in previous house update posts. We actually painted this wall the very first weekend we got the keys to our house – cos let’s face it, it would have been a pain to do once the furniture was in! – and I am still obsessed with it to this day. It absolutely makes this room, and it was the jumping off point for the rest of the room’s decor.

The bed and bedside tables were ones that we already had, which are from the IKEA Hemnes collection, and then we added to what we already to had with the matching chest of drawers and mirror from the same collection. Although the space was big enough, we decided there was no point to having a wardrobe in there, and adding the mirror above the drawers makes the room seem bigger and also makes it brighter, plus the top of the drawers gave us space for some pretty little decorative features! The wall mounted plant pots were from Amazon, and the other nick-nacks are all Home Bargains.

Our big cushions on the bed are actually from Sainsbury’s, which we got on sale, the bedding is actually Home Bargains, and the pinky bedding was on sale in Dunelm.

One of my other favourite features of the room that we DIY’ed (or Matthew did, if I’m being totally honest) is the bedside lights. The wooden brackets are just cheapy shelf supports from IKEA, which Matthew drilled holes into for the cables to go through, and both the rose gold cage and the actual light fittings we from Amazon, although sold separately. Psst, the bin is actually an IKEA plant pot!

Having a stunning feature wall, we didn’t want to do too much to any of the other walls, but I wanted some artwork up and figured the colour scheme made this the perfect place to put up my Disney watercolour skyline prints. I’ve had these for years – they were up on my bedroom wall at my parents – so we just got new frames for them (also IKEA, shock) and they work perfectly in the space we had. Like them, they’re from here!

As I said, the only thing that is lacking are the curtains, simply because we haven’t put the pole up yet. I’m actually taking the curtains that I had in my bedroom at home because they’re a gorgeous light cream that would work perfectly in the room, and curtains are hella expensive so if I can reuse a pair I’ve already got and love, then job done.

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So after sharing pictures of the wall we painted in our guest bedroom on Twitter I had an influx of people asking about how we did it, so here it is!

The fabulous thing about this geometric paint style is that it looks so cool but its actually surprisingly quick and simple to do, its just a case of knowing what you need, and what you need to do, and hopefully I’ll cover all that in this post.

So the things you’ll need:

Frog Tape – this is an absolute must, and this is the only thing where I feel really strongly about not cheaping out on. Regular masking tape will not give you completely clean lines as often paint will creep underneath the edges of the tape, but Frog Tape is treated with something that stops this from happening – I swear this post is not sponsored so please take my advice on this. You need the green tape (it also comes in yellow and orange, but its the green that you need for this), and for our wall we used the widest of the three sizes that B&Q keep in stock.

Your paint choices – we opted for 3 colours and got 1L of each, but obviously you can have as many or few colours as you like – I’ve seen similar things on Pinterest where people just paint one colour and have the lines as the statement!

Because our house is a new build, it already had a lovely fresh white wall for us to paint over, but if you’re not in the same position then make sure you paint your wall and let it dry properly before getting started on the pattern. Also don’t feel as though you have to have a white backdrop, you could do this with any colour, but if you’re going to use a darker background, you’ll want to do a coat of primer over your pattern before you start on the colours to make sure your background doesn’t show through.

So we started off by taping around the whole edge of the wall to create an outside border. This is totally optional but it gives it a nice edge and saves painful hours of cutting in so I do recommend it. Be sure to also tape around any sockets or switches.

Now the actual pattern we completely improvised. If you want to plan it before you start taping then that’s fine, but we actually were happier making it up as we went along, and the beauty of tape meant that if we did change our mind on a certain line, you just rip it back off and do it again. With a triangle pattern, the one thing I would say to keep an eye out for is that no three triangles have the same border line if you’re using three colours as we did, otherwise you’d end up with two triangles of the same colour touching, so just watch out.

Once we were happy with the pattern, we took a little bit of tape and wrote the colours on them so we could mark out which triangle was going to be which colour, again just to be sure that we didn’t end up with the same colour touching, and also just to make sure we had a good balance of the colours. Before you start to paint just double check that all of the tape is well stuck to the wall by smoothing over it all again.

Working one colour at a time, its just a case of filling in the gaps! When you’re only painting a few little shapes its amazing how much quicker it seems to take compared to painting a whole wall one single colour. Don’t worry about going over the edge of the tape a little bit with the paint, in fact you’re better off doing that to make sure you’ve filled right up to the edge of the shape.

Wait until you’ve painted in all of the colours, but be sure to peel the tape off before the paint has completely dried as this will prevent you pulling up any paint by accident with your tape. Start by peeling the pattern, and leave the outside border to last to peel, and most importantly take your time with the peeling. You don’t want to rush and end up flicking paint into the wrong section or getting tape stuck on wet paint.

Once you’ve peeled everything back off, you’re pretty much set, just allow plenty of time for the paint to dry fully before you do anything else to the wall!

So just to recap on the key points that I think are crucial to making this as perfect and painfree as possible:

Frog Tape is a must, do not risk using regular masking tape

You don’t have to overplan the pattern, in fact improvising can be easier

Peel the tape off before the paint dries completely

Having a border around the edge of the design saves a lot of time

For anyone wondering, we used Valspar paint in You’re Blushing, Angel’s Sigh and Petite Pirouette, as shown below:

So even though it feels like we’ve waited forever, in reality its only been 2 1/2 months since we saw our house for the first time, and on Thursday we officially completed and its now ours! We picked up the keys on Friday and the weekend has been the first phase of our moving process – I don’t actually leave my job until July 6th, so until then we’ll only be able to visit on weekends, but that hopefully means by the time we’re up there permanently, it will be mostly finished in terms of unpacking and decorating! (This is a bit of an unedited photo dump so apologies that some pictures are a bit dark)

We went up with my parents in a one car, one van convoy, both packed to bursting with the stuff we already have, and then once we’d unloaded that all into the garage, it was on to Ikea for the big furniture shop. I won’t bore you with the details, but 5 trolleys and one delivery coming on Tuesday, and we’re actually still not completely done as we realised we’ve picked up a few things in the wrong sizes and forgot a few little but key things like hinges and legs for cupboards.. As that was a fairly manual labour filled day, we didn’t build anything that night, and Matthew and I had what I believe is a traditional ‘first night in new house’ evening of takeaway pizza on the floor because we don’t have a dining table/chairs or even a sofa, and slept on our mattress on the floor because its our bed being delivered on Tuesday..

Our current living room set up

Saturday morning my parents brought round some food for breakfast; we got to use our toaster and kettle for the first time with toast for Dad and a cup of tea for my mum. Matthew and I then headed off to do a bit more shopping with Mum while we left my dad to start building some of the Ikea stuff. We hit Costco (for mainly cleaning supplies at this point), B&Q for paint and decorating bits and then went to DFS to order our sofa, which was a pretty easy job as we’ve had it picked our for ages! On our way back to the house we decided to try out our first local chippy to see how it was (a solid 7/10) and then after we’d eaten, again on the kitchen floor, Matthew and I set to work painting the feature wall in our guest bedroom. (I’ll be doing a full post on how we did this later on this week!)

Once the wall was painted, we could then build the bed in there and position all the furniture, and then my parents headed home. Matthew and I drove into Crewe for another B&Q trip, this time for paint for my office, plus some screws and wall plugs and a few other bits and bobs, and I spent the evening painting the feature wall in my office.

Sunday morning was another coat of paint in my office, then we headed back into Crewe and hit Home Bargains and Dunelm for some things for the bathroom, grabbed lunch in Nandos and headed back to the house where the Sky man had just arrived to set up our Sky box. I built all the bathroom bits, then while Matthew screwed them into the walls, I built the desk for my office and got that all set up.

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing some finishing touches in the guest bedroom, which is now pretty much finished apart from a mirror needing to be put on a wall and a few other little decor additions, then tidied up all the mess into the garage.

So one weekend in, we have pretty much finished the guest bedroom and the bathroom, bar a few little details, and made a start to pretty much every other room. We still haven’t decided how we want to decorate our bedroom or the living room, but as neither have that much furniture in them right now we’ve got plenty of time to decide! If you want to see how some of these rooms looked before, check out the first look at our home here.

This week I’ve been working with the fabulous Valspar Paint UK as they’ve been building up for the big reveal of a huge project they’ve been working on as part of their Colour Outside the Lines campaign, and today the UK gets to see what they’ve been painting..

This amazing work of art has been painted on the side of a building in Clerkenwell Road in Islington, London to inspire the people of Britain to ditch magnolia walls and boring white woodwork, and take up their paintbrushes to colour outside the lines, and we’re going to give you a little helping hand..

We’re offering one lucky follower a chance to win these Valspar goodies:

2 x Valspar tester pots 236ml

1 x 5L Valspar Premium for Walls and Ceilings

2 x 2.5L Valspar Primer and Undercoat

Worth over £100!

All you have to do to enter, and here’s how:

1. Follow @lottieanddisney and @ValsparPaintUK on Twitter

2. Tweet your answer to the following question: how many shades is Valspar available in? (We might have let the answer slip in our last post!). Use the hashtags #ValsparColour and #lottiedoesdisney

Entrants must be UK residents as vouchers will be sent to the winner in order for you to claim your paint!

I love a good trip to Ikea and work in B&Q (UK equivalent of Home Depot), and if I had a house of my own I don’t think I would ever stop redecorating!

So I decided to share my Disney decorating inspiration, and today it’s..

Winnie the Pooh!

It’s gender neutral, making it perfect for shared bedrooms or play rooms! Start off with a bright feature wall, as above, then use a less busy pattern to cover the bottom half of the other walls, topped with a contrasting border (wallpapering the bottom half of a wall is great if you have little ones who have a tendency to draw on walls..).

You can then use wall stickers or other wall art around the rest of the walls.

Apparently white furniture is very ‘in’ at the moment. I’m not totally sold on this, but consider it a blank canvas that you can customize with wall stickers, or you even use spray paint to add colour. The leaf canopy is great for adding a touch of the Hundred Acre Wood, and chunky tables, chairs and storage make it a proper kids room!